How can we best use Kindles in children’s education in the UK or even just in Adur?
They cost £111 each, inc Vat. They are monochrome and have no images, just text – loads and loads of text.
Let’s say we (a school) bought twenty of them, who would we give them to or lend them to and how would they use them? If you damage one, presumably then that child would miss out for say three months.
Or children could download the Free Kindle reader software to any PC (possibly not portable) so that those users can download what they want, provided that it’s free (500,000 books.) Could the education broadband facility cope with this, both speed and permissions.
Range of books is from Winnie the Pooh to the complete works of Shakespeare. But they can also be used for ‘white noise’ for very young children.
With six devices per Kindle unit account a group of six six-formers could be allowed a subscription to the Economist, say. They could also download possibly all their academic study books. Amazon are trialling a library service in America, where a book can be lent (electronically) to someone else for two weeks, not available in the UK yet. Then again we could give the six-former groups a budget for them to spend as they will.
What do schools and colleges spend on books each year?
Are there any charitable trusts who could help us?
Does it need to be part fo an overall strategy or is it just a tactic we should just get on with.
Some schools have already started.
As always the full question has to be sub-divided into Who, What, Why, When, Where and How and for each sub-group at the various stages in school.